Death Comes at the End of the Road
by ellequoi
Summary: Moonlighting as a mortician is one thing, but having your worst case come back to haunt you as you do so is irony on a scale that blows screechy pop songs out of the water. Star Trek TOS/2009 crossover too, AU from SPN5.21. Loosely follows "One Word..."


**A/N:** This fic follows the events of "One Word, and That Was Dead", but you don't need that story to read this one (my beta clemanthium101 has confirmed that!), just know that House treated Dean in a case that led to 'The Great Glazing [glass, not doughnuts] of 2010'.

* * *

**Death Comes At the End of the Road**: _In which House is the longest-serving staff member at PPTH, Dean's new job has him popping in for a chat, and they both complain about modern technology_.

Life goes on. The Great Glazing of 2010 finally comes to an end and then it's back to work, back to their old lives.

Life is cases and schemes and intrigue and pain, until the latter drowns out the rest. There comes a time when House has to remove his leg, and then there's phantom pain and angry nerve endings he has to find a way to deal with. One day, he wraps his mouth around the tailpipe of his old clunker (screw electric, they all look like golf carts), and once he's done that, once he's found his way, he doesn't notice the pain anymore.

Sure, everybody lies, but soon it turns out that everybody leaves, too. Wilson ransacks House's office one day and drives off on his motorcycle. No one mentions him again, at least not within earshot of House. His mother comes and sits in his chair and cries for a week straight, and he can't do anything about it, and it's the last time he sees her. His team self-implodes – Chase and Cameron divorce, Foreman clings to the hospital with dogged determination in the hopes that milking his seniority will one day be worth it (it isn't). When Lisa Cuddy, his Lisa, retires, she chooses to follow her daughter halfway across the world to volunteer. House predicts the girl will be spending more time with her mother than the rest of her life combined.

There doesn't seem to be much reason to stay on without any of the others there, but he does anyway. Always more cases to solve. The new team sucks and doesn't seem to think he's in charge, but he has his ways, of course. They get the message eventually. The hospital does away with the Diagnostics Department as technology renders it just about obsolete (although House disagrees); nowadays, anyone can perform a scan and Doctor Device does the work for them.

One thing they don't seem to be able to handle so well is whether someone is actually dead, funnily enough. House falls back on his specialty of nephrology and relocates to the morgue.

"She's not dead, you idiot," he snaps at the moron mortician intent on wheeling a woman into a freezer. "Fine, don't listen to me."

Sure enough, a few moments later the woman has clambered her way out, looking utterly confused.

"What's going on?" she asks. Her voice turns into a shriek when she realises where she is. "Where am I? Am I dead?"

"Does this place really look the afterlife?" House retorts. "You did have a bad case of rheumatic fever, and I have no idea how they missed your typhoid. You're infectious, not dead."

"Actually, you are," says someone coming down the stairs, and House's head jerks up. The warm gruffness he hears sounds familiar.

The woman wails.

"What, are you here to tell me I see dead people?" House asks.

"At least I'm not bald," says the man – a shot at House, who is. He winks at the woman as he turns to face them. "C'mon, sweetheart, it'll be okay." He nods in House's direction. "What's up, doc?" His eyes crinkle at the corners as he flashes House a smile.

"Dean Winchester." House's memories unfold. Oh, great. Moonlighting as a mortician is one thing, but having your worst case come back to haunt you as you do so is irony on a scale that blows screechy pop songs out of the water.

"You don't look a day older than the last time I saw you," he accuses him. It's been years; how many, he doesn't know.

Dean brushes him off. "I get my beauty rest." He takes the woman by the hand, arm around her, and leads her up the stairs, murmuring. "I'll deal with you later," he tells House in a much friendlier a way than he expected to hear from his former patient. They hadn't exactly parted on good terms.

House is tempted to follow, but he reads the woman's chart off the pad instead, typing in some choice comments. Once he's exhausted that, he wanders up to observe what surgery remains; most of them are performed through nanotech, and even the ones he watches are robotic. He cycles through different departments throughout the night. If Dean really wants him, he can page him.

The hospital lost his pager number some years back, probably on purpose. No one bothered to get him on the new badge system, but there's always the intercom. He gives up come morning and goes back to the morgue, a long wait ahead of him.

"Doc, you're killing me here," Dean says when he returns. "Well. If it were possible. You know how it is." House scowls. He still doesn't, and that's the problem.

First things first. "You're not going to take my leg instead of my cane this time, are you?"

Dean looks amused. He swings himself to the floor and settles into sitting cross-legged, patting the spot next to him. House joins him, albeit more slowly, stretching out his prosthetic to lay straight. He's the first familiar face he's seen in a very long time; House is almost eager to talk to him, and the feeling seems to be mutual.

"You ever figure out what happened to the hospital?" Dean asks. At first House thinks he's just asking to make fun of him, but his eyes are bright with curiosity and his face is open.

"I know what happened," said House, "you and your extraterrestrial buddies." Space travel is as entrenched in their world as hopping a plane now. 'Aliens' proved to be the answer he could seize onto, so close to Occam's Razor he could practically cut himself, never mind Wilson's Torah-thumping theories.

Dean laughs. "Oh, sure, that's one way to put it..."

So begins the strangest conversation of House's life.

"So what you're saying is that the books were true, everything's your fault, Weird Trenchcoat Guy really is an angel and you had to close the barn door after the devil escaped?"

At least he'd gotten one of those right.

"When you put it like that it just sounds silly."

House sits rubbing what's left of his leg, mostly out of habit. Nothing really hurts anymore; thank goodness for the future.

"You gonna tell me you've seen God?" he asks Dean.

"I don't _think_ I have, though it's hard to tell." Dean cocks his head. "Only way you'd believe, huh?"

"That would imply that I'd believe _you_."

"It'd help," Dean mutters.

"With _what?_"

"Well, I don't like to leave a job unfinished. So since I saved your life–" he still doesn't ask for gratitude, something House has always been more grateful for than what Dean did for him – "now I'm back to get you going into the good night, or whatever."

House's head is thrumming with thoughts so old they're new again, ones that squabble over 'is he wrong-is he right' debate when it comes to Dean. He's never answered the question, though he knows it's bound to be a combination of the two. Right now, he's back in the same odds over whether Dean's a murderer who's about to kill him, or the man who's trying to save him.

"Oh, please," he tells Dean, still not able to trust that the man isn't crazy, "after all that, you're going to kill me?"

Dean's smile fades. "Dude, you're _dead_."

House freezes up because it's something he must've known for a while but wasn't able to bring out, like the cases where one little word of Wilson's sent the answer cascading down. It's one thing to not believe the crazy in front of you; it's another to not believe the entire world around you. He's not called Dr. Hologram for nothing.

Dean's expression makes it look like he's scared for House. House wants to slap it off him.

He looks at his hand. It's not see-through.

"I'm sorry," Dean says and peers into his face, sympathetic in his own ham-fisted way. If not for the ghost issue, House suspects Dean would be reaching out to give him a manly shoulder clasp.

"How the Hell did _you_ manage to stop the Apocalypse?" House snarls. "Trip over the answer on the way to the toilet?" The snark flows back with a rush despite how little chance he's had to use it over the years.

"It was a long shot," Dean agrees. "I had help."

House suspects that he doesn't want to know whom that help might've been.

"Anyway, Doc House – Greg – I was cool with you hanging out here (though staying at work? that's just sad, man), but enabling others to be ghosts, that's the kind of thing I gotta stop."

"So what, are you going to salt and burn my rotting corpse?" asks House.

Dean shakes his head. "Not really how I work anymore." He drums his fingers against his denim-covered knee. "Kinda forgot this part of the introductions. _I am become Death_," he quotes.

House raises an eyebrow. "The badly-paraphrased Dylan Thomas was a shock as-is, but now you've read the _Bhagavad-Gita_, too?"

"Had to look it up on Wikipedia once. What can I say, research is important."

"So you're the ass harnessed to the entropy grindstone until the end of time." If he's going to believe it – and it doesn't look like he has much choice – he might as well go all the way.

"There aren't many ways to kill the devil," says Dean, sounding sad. "I started the Apocalypse, I had to end it. At the time, Death had, well, a death wish."

"Have you come to strike me dead again?"

"Nah. I mean, if you really wanted me to, but you'd be a pretty nasty zombie at this point. You don't even wanna know what year it is, I know I don't."

He must not be used to having real conversations anymore either; he's talking a mile a minute and his mouth hangs open as if he wants to supply them with more off-topic babble. It takes visible effort for him to close it.

House almost doesn't want to ask. "Then... what's supposed to happen?"

"You know you're the last person from my life who's left?" Dean muses. "A doctor I had for, like, a week."

House sends him a mocking pout. "Is that all I am to you? So much for taking it to the chest for me."

"All in a day's work. Speaking of, I probably should be getting you into the light right now, there are ways I'm supposed to be going about this, but hey, who's going to write me up?"

House stares at him warily. "What are you getting at?"

"What I'm trying to say is... want to have a drink together?"

That's how House ends up facing down death in a morgue with ridiculously well-aged scotch, trying not to think too hard about it. He's had scotch from 2020 before, when he was alive, and it tasted nothing like this. Then again, when was the last time he actually tasted something? Dean clinks a Molson Export against his glass.

"To the people we knew," he says. "Just gonna come out and break it to you – they're dead."

"Is this even real?" House wants to know, taking another sip.

Dean looks around and shrugs. "It is now."

He starts to feel the buzz a few drinks in, so he supposes Dean is right. It was never a question of whether he was right or wrong about Dean; the question was the accuracy of Dean himself.

_Dean is right_.

He lets it sink in, despite the slight irritation that maybe he should've seen it when he was working on his case. Though he wouldn't have wanted to. So there really had been nothing he could do. Except believe the patient, maybe.

He wonders if Dean could even take them back in time so he could see the case all over again the way things actually were. He can't blame himself for being blind – he'd had no reason to believe in either Casper or Lucifer – but now that he's trying to fit his memories into an entirely different headspace, he wouldn't mind seeing it in context.

Dean scoffs at his request. "Back in time? Asking a lot, aren't you? I already told you everything."

"I need to know."

"Chuck wrote about it eventually, published it through vanity press. Never read it or anything, but Sam had a copy, I think." Dean rummages in the pockets of his leather jacket and pulls out a faded paperback. It's been so long since House has seen a book that he practically drools – would if he could, anyway.

It's a slim paperback called _One Word, and That Was Dead_. House runs his hands over it, relishing the rasp of paper against his fingers. It's been interminably long since he felt paper, since he felt anything.

He forgets Dean's presence until Dean says, "Go ahead. I've got beer." He's also got an old, '70s-style TV all of a sudden, the kind that ends up in crappy motels, or used to. He turns the dial and sits back to watch an episode of _Charlie's Angels_. It transfixes House for a moment. He screamed his head off the day they carted out his beautiful flatscreen and replaced it with some holoshit. Not that it made a difference.

A pile of guns appear between Dean and him. Dean takes them apart, cleans them without looking down. When House was just Greg, he used to sit on the floor surrounded by men doing the same thing. He breathes in the smell of metal and oil, relishing it over the acrid plastic of phasers. Whose guns are those, anyway? Are they even real? The chatter Dean would unleash upon him makes it not worth asking.

"Don't you have work to do?" he asks at one point. Dean's eyes don't even leave the screen.

"Minions."

Of course.

House works his way through the book, reading punctuated by Dean's raunchy comments about what's on screen. He's surprised to find himself and his colleagues featured alongside the Winchesters. The number of hoops Dean jumped through trying to avoid his questions makes him laugh. Served that lying bastard right to have to work at it.

When he closes the book, Dean has moved on to _Baywatch_. It reminds House of one of his assumptions about Dean.

"Always thought there was something going on between you and Castiel." The TV disappears.

Dean roars with laughter. "Really, me and Cas? Dude, he's an angel, I told you."

"I know that _now_," House snipes, though his friends had claimed it for years. "Still, you never wanted to–?"

Little incredulous chuckles are still leaking out of Dean. He wipes the corners of his eyes.

"What about you and, uh... your bud Wilson, huh?"

"Touché," says House, and they clink their drinks together again. "What happened to Wilson? How is he?"

"Dead," Dean say candidly, an implied 'duh' after it. "I told you, everyone. 'Cept for Cas, of course. I never met Wilson, though he must've been a freak if he was friends with you, but I took an interest in the hospital people 'cause of what happened. Yeah, he made it through all right. Totally cried when there was no reunion with the Littlest Cancer Ward. You showed up in his memories a lot, don't ask me why."

House closed his eyes, relief washing through him. Wilson, true to form, had been bothering him for years even after his disappearance.

"What would there be for me?" he asked quietly. "If I left here."

"You're lucky you got my attention and not just some reaper's, I walk you right to your door. If you go to Hell, I have to actually go by there. You go to Heaven, I get to visit _my family_." Said with such beaming reverence, as if it's better than Disneyland pre-Hurricane T'Vonn. "Hope you're not rooting for the Empire, but it's not up to me."

"That's what there is for _you_. Doesn't really answer my question."

Dean hesitates, holding back the barrage of speech until he knows what he wants to say. House finds himself the victim of that manly shoulder clasp after all. It's not so bad; he'd forgotten how he used to be able to register difference in temperature and pressure through his skin. He leans into the touch, despising himself a little for soaking it up like this.

"Heaven's kind of a gyp. A bit like being in the Matrix, but it just keeps running through your greatest hits. Anything's better than Hell, of course, Hell is..." He trails off, haunted. "I spruced the place up, and it's _still_ horrible beyond description, so Heaven didn't have to do much to top it. But put it this way, they didn't try very hard."

"Those are my options?" It doesn't sound promising. He wonders how much longer this hospital will stay standing, and if he would stay standing with it.

"For now," Dean says quickly, sensing his reluctance. "I'm working on Plan Purgatory, but I'm waiting on a plane of existence to clear out." He rolls his eyes. "Freaking fairies think they have all the time in the worlds."

That doesn't sound much better. House shrugs off Dean's hand. He's beginning to regret this whole situation, even if he has finally pieced together the mystery of Dean Winchester's case.

"Once I can divert more rock stars and prostitutes away from Hell, _that's_ when I can get started on Good Heaven, Plan G.H." All right, that does sound better. "Though I dunno if you've noticed, but man does modern music blow chunks! I tune in every decade or so and it keeps getting worse. I got into blues and actually started listening to the _nineties_ to get some variety." Dean shudders. "Grunge is shameful."

"There was some good stuff in the 'noughties."

Dean's lip curls. "Other than the name?"

In no time, there's a record player spinning where the TV was before. It reminds House of the one in his dad's study that he wasn't allowed to touch.

He closes his eyes, leans back. The shrill of Ryan Adams' harmonica hits him for the first time in forever, and he realises how much he missed it as his brain fills in the words before they play, quicker and surer than the cues on a karaoke machine. Do they do karaoke anymore?

Dean is not impressed. "Really, this the best you got? Sounds like a sissy to me."

"What would you have done if it hadn't been on vinyl?"

"Wouldn'ta been good music if it hadn't been on vinyl, no loss."

House has to concede the point there.

Dean is babbling a little again, probably poking further fun at the music. House interrupts him as the song changes over to 'This House Is Not For Sale'.

"This one's about ghosts," he tells him. "Your kind of business."

Dean finally goes quiet. "Huh. So it is."

They let another verse wash over them.

"You know," says Dean, "Sammy and I used to watch tons of horror movies, listen to 'Werewolves of London' and crap like that. Dad probably only let us watch it so we could fact-check it, but we didn't care. Laughed our asses off."

House wonders if Dean is asking for something similar from him. "What about this one? Any mistakes?"

Dean shakes his head forlornly. "Naw. Kinda disappointing." He laughs a little. "This dude coulda come hunting with us, if he wasn't too busy crying over his guitar."

"Shut up," House directs him, sensing another rant coming on. He hears a pop as Dean opens another beer. He relaxes. Dean criticises the music, laughs at the Oasis cover. Despite the unfortunate comments from the peanut gallery, the songs can still move him; some of the saddest ones are strung together on this side of the album. In fact, he tries hard to stay with them and not think about what is about to come.

When it scratches to an end, dread fills him. He doesn't _want_ things to change, hover- and solar- and holo-gadgets aside. He still wants to know what Peds is going to do for the hybrid kid (whom he's nicknamed Prius, though nobody gets it) and whether McCoy – totally the new Wilson – will make it through his residency without a divorce and/or ulcer and what someone will dare the nurse who reminds him of Kutner to order from the replicator next.

Dean bumps a broad shoulder against his, jolting him back from his anxious thoughts.

"I was curious," says Dean, "so I toasted your bod already."

"I'm flattered, but not interested."

Dean screws up his face. "Like you could do any better at this point – or ever. Unless you finally managed to get with Dr. Cuddy, she was hot."

House scoffs. "Years before _you_ ever came along, I'll have you know. And after, too."

Dean holds up a hand. In a good enough mood to oblige him, House slaps a palm against his and wonders if it's the one he stitched up.

"I sent a mean thought towards your ugly bones and you lit up like a Christmas tree. You didn't notice?"

House shakes his head slowly. He's relieved that Dean is carrying on the conversation; his long-windedness is more than welcome if it keeps House from meeting his maker. Especially now that he knows there may be a maker.

"Figured as much," says Dean. "It's the hospital that's keeping you here. Talk about married to your work."

"Look who's talking."

Dean snorts. "I got paid with getting a planet back, it was a heck of a raise. What're you getting out of this?"

House doesn't really know how to answer that. "Good question."

They run out of things to say – without talking to people, you run out of practice – and stare at each other. Dean stuffs his hands into his pockets. Finally, the silence is broken by a plop echoing through the room. House looks at the green spot clashing against the green tile.

"You're dripping," he says for something to say.

Dean turns and leans over to check the splotch. House notes the sickle stuffed down the back of his jeans. The blood it's drenched in soaks into Dean's t-shirt, and he watches with morbid fascination, unsure of the protocol for pointing it out.

He goes for, "Got something there."

Dean's hand flies back and pulls the sickle out. "So I do." His face lights up and he thrusts the weapon at House. "Dare you to lick it."

House surveys it with distaste. "Will you bring me back to life if I do?"

"Dude, how much longer do you want? You know that Highlanders aren't real, right?" He spins the sickle one slow turn, and when it comes back upright it's clean.

House casts around wildly for another topic to delay Dean with.

"What's with the TV and booze, anyway?" he asks. "Aren't you supposed to be beyond humanity by now?"

Dean chuckles, though not convincingly.

"When I moved up the pay scale, it was like being a sugar cube dropped into a swimming pool. It took years to be able to pull myself together enough to be _me_ again. I barely made it for one last road trip with Sam."

"Yeah?" He thinks back to Dean's brother, tall and teary and doe-eyed. "How'd he go out, anyway?"

"Same way he came in – wet, naked and ugly." The jibe is softened by the affection in Dean's face. "Fell in the tub, if you can believe it." He rolls his eyes. "A lame-o 'til the end."

House smirks. "Must run in the family." He gets a mild shove for that.

"What you see now might as well be Death wiggling a pinky toe. The human stuff, besides being awesome, helps keep me together. Been wondering about letting go," he says casually, "when you do. Not much point in showing up personally to places anyway."

"I wouldn't."

"Yeah, you've made that pretty clear."

"Fine, don't listen to the last person in the world who'll talk to you."

"Not sure how valid your membership to the person club is anymore."

"I guess you'd know," says House. He watches with dread and what feels like a sinking heart as Dean stands up and extends a hand to him. "You're not giving me a choice anymore, are you?"

Dean's face softens. "You know it'll be better this way."

For everyone else, he supposes it will. He ignores the hand and gets up on his own merits.

"I know the way," House snaps when Dean takes the lead. He forces his way in front and ignores the dark muttering behind him.

He takes the most circuitous route possible, the grand tour, the kind he liked to come up with commentary to for Wilson or Cuddy's benefit in case they ever came back. It's a bit of an aren't-you-sorry-you-left tour because of that, but he's leaving, and he thinks he'll be sorry.

Dean puts up with it, although he does pop into the occasional room – just ones where the patient's coding. House doesn't look to see what he does in there, and moves quickly away from those hallways so he doesn't have to hear what happens either way.

Eventually, they meander through the front doors, and House wishes he'd taken his time here, instead.

He's _outside_.

Sure, the sky is a little strange in colour, and there's a weird smell in the air he can't place, but it doesn't keep that air from blowing around him or the sun shining on his face.

He smiles.

There used to be a river next to them. It's not there anymore. Nor are many things he's used to. The skyline is as convoluted with oddly-shaped skyscrapers made of bizarre materials as one might expect.

It doesn't look anything like the soaring mountains of Japan or the searing rainforests of Borneo, but it gives him that same thrill to see it.

The doctor approaching stops dead in his tracks. He stares, not at but around House.

"What're you doing out of the hospital?" McCoy asks. He's turning pale, hand hovering over his comm badge. "We don't have the resources to extend your holo display matrix outside the parameter of the building, it'll overheat the..." He fumbles for words before giving up: "I'm a doctor, not a programmer, dammit, I don't know how it works. What I do know is that you're looking more see-through already. You have to stop."

"This is an old patient of mine," House says, not bothering with names as usual. "He's taking me on a road trip."

"Shoulda seen the things this guy did to me," Dean chips in. "Multiple colonoscopies, sedation 'round the clock, ice bath, syringe to the lungs, stitches, tube down my throat, needle in my eye, all sorts of biopsies..."

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. House smiles again remembering what he put Dean through.

McCoy's jaw drops. He looks as if he can't decide whether to be horrified or impressed.

"That's the most barbaric thing I ever heard! I told 'em we needed to update your programming."

"Don't bother," says Dean. "He's a ghost."

"Knew I shouldn'ta uncapped that bourbon last night," McCoy mutters, rubbing at his eyes.

"Anyway," House says breezily, "we're going to be going now. Anyone I should look up once I get there?"

"I don't know where you're going."

House looks at Dean, who shrugs.

"Neither do I."

"Then–" McCoy shakes his head. "But you're disengaged from the system?"

"Only took him like two hundred fifty years," says Dean.

McCoy blinks. "Guess I'll get 'em to take your name off the clinic schedule?"

"I'm _on_ that?" says House.

"I know, they're fools upstairs. Us interns been stuck filling in. Maybe now they'll get it right."

"They never do." At least one thing never changed in a hospital.

Dean pokes him as a reminder to go, and McCoy's eyes grow even wider seeing someone physically interact with House, whom everyone else just goes straight through.

They start walking away as McCoy calls, "Wait! Y'all just gonna take off?"

"Bye," says House, the only farewell he's giving. Feels good to have one, this time. "See you soon."

"Not this one," Dean tells him, McCoy's sputters dying out behind them as they get further away. "He's going to be a bitch about it – fake me out a bunch, then take forever."

"Ha! Finally getting a taste of your own medicine, are you?" They step off hospital ground and House feels ready to fly off the face of the Earth. Dean grabs and solidifies him. "Don't make us walk the whole way! Seriously, what do you have against cripples?"

"It's not cripples, just you." But there's suddenly a car before them, gleaming and smelling of gas and leather. He recognises it, a little. It's fantastic, everything cars used to be before they got boring. "Sweet ride, huh?"

"Thought you'd have upgraded to something better by now," snipes House, not wanting to agree.

"Bite your tongue! There's no such thing." He pats the hood like one would the head of a pet before sliding in.

As the car starts up, the radio flickers into life with something loud and screechy that makes House wince. Dean changes the channel.

"Sorry. It's kinda like my CB these days."

They race down a deserted road that looks closer and closer to those of their time the further they go. House clenches his hands together, on edge from watching it unfurl yet getting nowhere.

"Is this really necessary, this whole scenic route business?" complains House. "I didn't really mean we had to go on a road trip."

"Tough," says Dean. "I did." He takes his eyes off the road, turns his head a few degrees. "I thought you wanted more time."

"Yeah, at the hospital. Now that I'm hurtling towards my death at two hundred kilometres an hour, I'm a little anxious to know what it is."

Dean shrugs. The shady lanes of houses and trees melt away into mountain ranges, the biggest one of which they will have to pass through.

"Great, a tunnel. I'm so going to Hell, aren't I?"

"You'd be surprised how these paths can turn out."

They stop at the toll-gate. It's a glaring, reflective white until Dean flicks off the headlights. He rolls down his window as the toll collector approaches.

"Sorry, didn't bring my wallet," House says. "Guess you'll have to cover this one."

"You're the toll." Dean leans his arm over the side. "Hey Pete, what's new?"

He and 'Pete' gossip like little girls for far longer than any grown man should. House starts listening in (all boring stuff about people whose names all rhyme) and interjecting with annoying comments until they give up. His fate was supposed to be in question here, dammit, not the full-body makeover slash sex change of someone-Elle (much as that kind of thing interests him).

"So is he good to go?" Dean says, breaking the glum silence left after House's meddling pays off. House straightens beside him.

Pete pulls out a clipboard and flips through a page or two, finger tracing down each own, before he finally nods. House lets the curve of his spine ease into the seat again.

"Sweet. See ya next time, bud."

"That's good?" asks House. His hand hovers over the wheel of the car, ready to plow them into the heart of the mountain.

Dean grins. "You're golden."

House lowers his hand, his head. He doesn't smile. Dean already did that, anyway.

"You're serious," he says, not quite able to believe it.

Dean nods.

"Okay," House says. "You can go slower now."

"Oh, sure, now that we've reached the boring part."

House fiddles with the radio but only gets weird marine mammal sounds. When the tunnel clears, they're on a dinky two-lane highway, flanked by grassland on either side. There are more stars in the sky than he's ever seen.

Dean pulls off the side of the road at an intersection. "I thought I'd try something out." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

Pulling over never goes well. House thought he _settled_ this, but he can't let it die; he's getting whiplash from trying to determine whether Dean's actions are good or sinister in nature. He stops trying. At this point, all that's certain is that Dean's a bastard. Probably right, but definitely a bastard.

"If you've found some way to harvest my soul for energy, can you at least be neat about it? Your clothes are filthy."

"What is with you and the murder thing? You know what happened now."

"What are you doing, then?" House asks, but then he sees Wilson and Cuddy and his mother coming down the road towards them.

"That," says Dean, but House is leaping out of the car, legs steady and strong and whole, and sprints down the road.

Later on, when Billy Joel is playing on the jukebox and someone throws a bottle at a mirror and he follows the trajectory back, he realises he never saw what happened to Dean. Never said goodbye, or extended the thanks he was finally ready to give, the apology, anything. He doesn't even know if there is a Dean Winchester left to say goodbye to, or how one would reach him. Once more, there are questions. Finally, he has something to puzzle through in his mind, not just reading memories like mysteries you know the solution to.

Dean Winchester must be the worst Death ever; he just won't let things die, will he?

Bastard.

**END**

* * *

**A/N:** hopefully the 250 years (more like 240-245) that have passed will help explain any character discrepancies. Let me know if that wasn't the case. And yes, I Chucked myself. I started this fic/chapter/epilogue when speculation on the Winchesters meeting Death involved Dean having to take his place, and the idea really grabbed me. Still a little sad that didn't turn out to be the case, but this fic gave me the release to imagine what it would be like (as well as FINALLY have House and Dean get along! I was sad when they never would in "One Word..."). Title is from the Agatha Christie novel _Death Comes at the End_, which IIRC was awesomely set in ancient Egypt.

Whew, the "Dead" series has finally ended! How freeing, but what a downer. Well, you can't have things more wrapped up than all the characters being dead. Though I'm sure dead!House and death!Dean will meet again to argue whether House deserves Good Heaven or Purgatory (it's really the latter; by committing suicide, House shouldn't have gotten to Heaven, but Dean - and I - _had_ to), and House will decide not to apologise or thank Dean after all.


End file.
